Macy’s Gets Coal for Christmas
January 10, 2019 by Chris LangeMacy’s Inc. (NYSE: M) announced results from its holiday season early on Thursday, and it looks like Santa brought this retailer a lot of coal. The guidance for the coming year was not exactly spectacular either.
Comparable sales growth for the November/December period was 0.7% for owned stores and 1.1% for owned plus licensed stores.
The company revised its guidance going forward for the 2019 fiscal year and now expects to see comparable sales up over 2% and net sales down between 2.0% and 0.5%. In terms of earnings per share, Macy’s expects to see this in the range of $3.95 to $4.00.
Consensus estimates are calling for $4.23 in EPS and $25.01 billion in revenue for the coming year.
Jeff Gennette, board chair and chief executive of Macy’s, commented:
We delivered our second consecutive year of positive holiday comparable sales, driven largely by the traction of our strategic initiatives: Backstage, Vendor Direct, Store Pickup, Loyalty and Growth50. We experienced another period of double-digit growth in our digital business and continued strength in the Growth50 stores. The holiday season began strong – particularly during Black Friday and the following Cyber Week, but weakened in the mid-December period and did not return to expected patterns until the week of Christmas. In the holiday period, we saw strong performance across a number of categories (fine jewelry, women’s shoes, fragrance, dresses, outerwear, active and home). This sales growth was largely offset by: underperformance of other categories (women’s sportswear, seasonal sleepwear, fashion jewelry, fashion watches and cosmetics); temporary fulfillment challenges following the fire in our West Virginia distribution center; and underestimation of the impact of changes to our pre-Christmas earn & redeem promotional event.
Shares of Macy’s were last seen down about 19% at $25.80, in a 52-week range of $22.47 to $41.99. The consensus analyst price target is $35.38.
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